I had originally announced “Talks on Tolkien” as a winter series, and even though the snow is still slowly melting in my corner of the world, we have passed the spring equinox and the Fall of Sauron, which should be bringing us into a new age. So this post will present the last video in my series for this winter. That doesn’t mean that I won’t post a video here every now and then in the coming months, but I do have to move on to focus on other things.

The previous seven videos I’ve presented here have all featured established scholars who have published books in the field of Tolkien Studies (Flieger, Shippey, Drout, Croft, Garth, Fimi, Rateliff). I thought that for the last video, I would turn to a new scholar — though she is someone with plenty of experience in the area of fandom: Dawn Walls-Thumma, known as Dawn Felagund to some. Dawn’s talk, “Transformative Works as a Means to Develop Critical Perspectives in the Tolkien Fan Community,” was presented at Mythmoot III in January. If you’re wondering what the term “transformative work” means, here is the definition offered by the Organization for Transformative Works: “A transformative work takes something extant and turns it into something with a new purpose, sensibility, or mode of expression” — in other words, fanfic, vids, artwork by fans can all be classified as transformative works.

In her presentation, Dawn talks about the rise of Tolkien fandom and the development of different fan communities with the advent of Internet fandom. She presents the results of a survey asking people about their experiences in fandom and why they write fanfiction. You can follow along with the super handout that accompanies the talk.

If you’re interested in responding to Dawn’s Tolkien Fan Fiction Survey, she is keeping it open until December. A couple of other sources that she mentions include the OTW Fanlore wiki, which has a Timeline of Tolkien Fandom. She also made use of data from another fan survey by centrumlumina, which you can consult here.

Dawn is currently a Master’s candidate in the Humanities at American Public University where, following Tolkien’s inspirations, she is working on a thesis on Beowulf. She has presented at the Mythmoot II and Mythmoot III conferences, and will be at the New York Tolkien Conference in June speaking about the historical bias in Tolkien’s works and how this motivates the creation of fan fiction. She recently published an article in Mythprint. On her fan side, Dawn Felagund is the founder and owner of the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild, which just celebrated its tenth anniversary, and a moderator on the Many Paths to Tread archive and Back to Middle-earth Month, an annual event that seeks to promote the creation of Tolkien-based fanworks. You can also find her on Tumblr: dawnfelagund; Twitter: @DawnFelagund; or her blog, the Heretic Loremaster.

If you have a favorite Tolkien fan community or transformative work (or want to mention any other matter) please let us know in the comments!

Other Tolkien videos and podcasts

In selecting the few talks that I’ve featured in the last two months, I’ve had many videos and podcasts to choose from. If you’re looking for more, there are excellent talks in the Tolkien at Oxford podcasts featuring recorded lectures by Dr. Stuart Lee and Dr. Elizabeth Solopova and others. Tolkien in Oxford: A Symposium held at Merton College last November has now posted audio recordings of most of their presentations.

This list by no means covers all that there is. For example, I’ve just discovered this audio recording of a lecture delivered in January at Wheaton College by Dr. Olga Lukmanova: “Tolkien in Russia: There and Back Again.” Or you can try a lecture by Dr. Alaric Hall on “Tolkien in Leeds.” There’s so much more out there, but I have to stop myself now as this is getting far too long to be a postscript! Hope you enjoyed the Talks on Tolkien series.

The Popular Culture Association national conference is just around the corner. After a successful trial run of Tolkien Studies as a special area last year, the organizers have included Tolkien Studies as a regular topic in the annual program. This year features another packed program, once again organized by Robin Reid.

The conference will be held in New Orleans from April 1 – 4. The Tolkien sessions are all on Friday, April 3, with a business meeting on April 4. If you’re interested, you can join the Facebook group, “Tolkien Studies at Popular Culture/American Culture Association” and/or read my summary of a couple of roundtables last year here and here. And please note that the list of panels below is subject to change — if you plan to go, always check the official program to make sure you have accurate and updated information. As you can see, the Tolkien Studies sessions occupy a whole day, but if you’re around for the rest of the conference, there’s a huge range of other sessions on popular culture to take in.

I enjoy many things about Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films – the material realization of various Middle-earth cultures, the creation of the best movie dragon I’ve ever seen, Martin Freeman’s Bilbo, to name only a few – but of course Jackson is not making the films specifically for me, a medievalist with a love of Tolkien’s work. As such, I had hoped that Jackson would have given us a resonant scene focusing on an uncle and his nephews — Thorin, Fili, and Kili — making their heroic last stand in battle together. There is a long tradition of the special relationship between “sister-sons” and their uncles in medieval literature that Tolkien refers to in The Hobbit. Working out that relationship to its traditional end would have inserted Jackson’s scene more firmly in a body of stories about these deeply embedded emotional relationships that are a part of western Europe’s cultural history.[1]

Now wait a minute, you might be saying to yourself. Jackson [2] clearly indicates a strong relationship between Thorin and his nephews, and their death scenes in The Battle of the Five Armies are somewhat connected and set apart from others. Yes, but not exactly in the traditional way I’m talking about.

In The Hobbit, Tolkien simply reports, “Of the twelve companions of Thorin, ten remained. Fili and Kili had fallen defending him with shield and body, for he was their mother’s elder brother.” (“The Return Journey,” The Hobbit 268).[3] Yes, they defend each other because they’re family, but more specifically because Fili and Kili are Thorin’s “sister-sons” (sweostor sunu in Old English).

Uncle-nephew relationships, and sometimes even more precisely maternal uncle-nephew relationships (therefore, “sister-sons”), are frequently represented as a special bond in medieval literature. In Beowulf, the poet alludes to the story of Sigemund, êam (maternal uncle) to Fitela (line 881), and how they fought together in times of need. In line 115 of the Old English poem “The Battle of Maldon,” Wulfmær, one of the fallen warriors, is identified as the lord’s swuster sunu. Tolkien recognizes the appropriateness of Wulfmær’s place near his uncle in the verse drama “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son,” which is based on “The Battle of Maldon.” In this play, two men are searching after the battle for the body of their lord when one of them finds Wulfmær:

This head we know!
Wulfmær it is. I’ll wager aught
not far did he fall from friend and master.

His companion answers:

His sister-son! The songs tell us,
ever near shall be at need nephew to uncle. (“Homecoming” 127)

Other uncle-nephew relationships can be found in Charlemagne and Roland, Hrothgar and Hrothulf, Arthur and Gawain. The relationship isn’t always positive; in some stories, Mordred is Arthur’s sister-son, which makes his treachery even worse. Théoden and Éomer or Turgon and Maeglin provide some other examples in Tolkien’s work. Verlyn Flieger explains how we can even see the Bilbo-Frodo relationship in this light. [4]

So what does Jackson do with the uncle-nephew bond? In The Battle of the Five Armies, Thorin welcomes Fili and Kili to the kingdom of Erebor, addressing them as his “sister’s sons.” In Jackson’s movies the young dwarves Fili and Kili refer to Thorin as their uncle, and in The Desolation of Smaug Thorin tells Fili that one day he will be king.[5] In The Battle of the Five Armies, when Thorin finally bursts out of the mountain gate to join the battle, the two warriors running closest to him on either side are Fili and Kili. In their last fight, Thorin calls Dwalin, Fili, and Kili to go with him in an attempt to take down Azog. Gandalf comments that Thorin is taking his best fighters with him. In Old English they would be called his heorð-geneatas, his “hearth-companions,” a small group of noble, well-trained fighters who are closest to their lord, and it is reasonable to think that the young and courageous nephews would be among them. Fili and Kili, then, are appropriately represented as sister-sons in most of Jackson’s Hobbit.

But the uncle-nephew bond dissipates in their final scenes. While Tolkien recognizes in “The Homecoming” that “ever near shall be at need nephew to uncle,” in The Battle of the Five Armies the nephews end up nowhere near their uncle in a time of need. Instead, Thorin sends Fili and Kili away to hunt for Azog, and then the two nephews split up in separate searches as well. Fili is killed in the sight of both of his kinsmen (we don’t see him fighting heroically to the end; he’s just skewered and then thrown over a cliff) but both Thorin and Kili are too far away to do anything about that attack. Uncle and nephew cannot stand and defend each other. The killing of Fili enrages Kili, who runs off in a passionate Orc-killing spree, but his end is complicated by the arrival of Tauriel.

Now, I have to make clear that I do not object in principle to the creation of new characters like Tauriel. But her involvement in Kili’s last fight obscures the uncle-nephew bond that defines Thorin and his sister-sons. Instead of Thorin, Fili, and Kili fighting side-by-side until they are cut down, we get a different trio: Kili-Tauriel-Legolas defending each other. Kili’s last look is not to his uncle but to Tauriel; his uncle is too far away to be part of the scene. The special bond of an uncle with his nephews who “had fallen defending him with shield and body,” is nowhere to be seen.

Peter Jackson knows how to film emotional battle scenes, as he demonstrated in The Return of the King: sweeping music, slow motion, the melee of battle, the depiction of personal anguish.

Had Jackson completed the Hobbit story with a heroic last stand of uncle and nephews fighting side-by-side on the battlefield, their tale would have participated in a long tradition of sister-son stories and allowed us to feel the emotional impact of that relationship in a visceral way.

[1] These uncle-nephew relationships are important in other cultures beyond the European, but I am only familiar with the northern European literary uncle-nephew motif. It is likely that the practice of fostering high-born children – having a son educated in his uncle’s home, for example – contributed to the motif in medieval literature.

[2] I use “Jackson” throughout as shorthand. Although he was the director of the Hobbit movies, he was not the only writer. The full writing team consists of Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh, and Guillermo del Toro, who gets a writing credit for his involvement with the project in its earlier stages.

[3] Tolkien inserted this line about Fili and Kili dying in defense of their uncle late in the process of composition. According to John Rateliff: “The idea that the two most likeable of all Bilbo’s companions should also die in the battle…first appears in the continuation of the typescript that eventually (autumn 1936) replaced the Third Phase manuscript” (684, n. 11). Rateliff also points out that Thorin was originally Fili and Kili’s great-uncle, but Tolkien later moved him one generation closer. (See, for example, Rateliff 444 – 445, note 11). In Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings, in the section on “Durin’s Folk,” Thorin appears in the genealogy as Fili and Kili’s uncle (1418).

[4] Verlyn Flieger discusses the Bilbo-Frodo kinship in the light of the uncle-nephew motif in her essay, “Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero.” The essay has been reprinted in a couple of places, including Flieger’s collected essays in Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien. Kent State University Press, 2012 and in the 2004 volume, Understanding the Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs, published by Houghton Mifflin and partly available as a Google e-book.

[5] Rateliff comments on the line of succession in Tolkien’s conception of the Dwarves’ patriarchal line of kings which excludes the maternal nephews (704). In the early Middle Ages, young relatives in the maternal line might succeed a ruler; it is interesting that in this detail Jackson is closer to early medieval practice than the book.

Works Cited

Flieger, Verlyn. “Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero.” Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien. Kent State University Press, 2012. 141-58. Print. Also available in Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism. Ed. Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. 122-45. Print and Google e-book.

Jackson, Peter, dir. The Battle of the Five Armies. New Line Cinema, 2014. Film.

Today I have a post that combines my interests in both Tolkien and pedagogy.

In one of my English courses, Studies in Medievalism: Tolkien and Myth-making, I ask students to read the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and some of the medieval literature that influenced him. We also consider later adaptations of Tolkien’s fiction in various media. As part of this cultural study of contemporary fandom and myth-making, students have the option of producing their own adaptation of Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories, accompanied by a researched analysis that relates their project to critical discussions of adaptation, fandom, medievalism, and Tolkien’s fiction.

In the January 2014 semester, my student Shelby MacGregor produced a series of photographs illustrating scenes from an imagined dystopian Lord of the Rings movie, set sometime in the near future. The analysis that she wrote to accompany these pictures discussed Tolkien’s representation of nature and technology compared to Peter Jackson’s film versions and considered some of the problems of adaptation.

Below, you will find some of Shelby’s photographs along with her descriptions. (All photos copyright Shelby MacGregor).

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Photos and Descriptions by Shelby MacGregor

This project aimed to present scenes in a post-modern adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It was heavily inspired by Peter Jackson’s interpretation of the trilogy, and also by the science fiction films of Ridley Scott.

Moving the story to somewhere in our future instead of somewhere in our past would require different weapons and technologies from the original. The Ring became a computer chip, and instead of throwing the Ring into a volcano, it became a virus that would be installed into the Super Computer that was controlling industry and therefore destroying the world.

Frodo and Sam play a large role in this imagined film, as they are charged with installing the virus in the Super Computer. They are dressed in more natural clothes to connect to the natural lifestyles of the people in the Shire and to contrast the natural world with industry in a visual and striking way. Mordor appears as a power plant, with Frodo daunted by the size and destruction found in the modern world.

Each character is styled differently to reflect the regions of Tolkien’s Middle-earth that they come from. Lady Eowyn is the closest to Jackson’s representation of her. It is assumed that the people of Rohan accept less technology than the rest of Middle-earth, preferring to tend to their horses.

This project allowed me to work with adaptation theory, photography, editing, and costume design, as I made or styled every item that the characters are wearing. I was aiming to make film scenes come to life that are instantly recognizable as The Lord of the Rings, while also staying away from simply remaking Jackson’s film scenes. It was an interesting and challenging project, and I am glad that I got the opportunity to try something creative.

“We welcome proposals on any area of Tolkien Studies (the Legendarium, adaptations, reader reception and fan studies, media and marketing) from any disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspective. Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers per standard session.”

In my previous post, I wrote about one of the roundtable discussions in the Tolkien Studies special area introduced this year at the national Popular Culture / American Culture Association conference, which was held in Chicago in April. Today I have a summary of another roundtable discussion, this one on doing research in the Tolkien archives at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Because I was one of the panellists, I didn’t take as copious notes as I might have done as an audience member, but at least I can give you a taste of the discussion. My part will look disproportionately longer than the others, but that’s because I have notes on my own presentation!

The Tolkien Collection in the Marquette University Archives

It is not unusual to be met with surprise if you happen to mention that there’s a Tolkien archive – in Milwaukee. Many people assume that all of Tolkien’s manuscripts would be held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. And while the Bodleian has a rich collection of Tolkien papers – such as his lecture notes, drafts of some of his fiction, translations and glossaries for his teaching – the J.R.R. Tolkien Collection at Marquette University is where you will find his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit manuscripts, as well as Farmer Giles of Ham and the original Mr. Bliss.

Our roundtable started off with William (Bill) Fliss, the Archivist in the Department of Special Collections, describing the history and scope of this collection, starting with William Ready, the head librarian in the 1950s who was the first to inquire if Tolkien would sell his literary papers, which is probably one of the reasons why they ended up at Marquette. Bill also pointed out that the collection extends beyond these manuscripts to secondary sources, including materials donated by Tolkien collectors. To get a full sense of these diverse materials, take a look at the online descriptive inventory. Another interesting development is that it is now possible to record various Tolkien-related websites so that they too will become part of the historical record.

Amy Amendt-Raduege spoke next about her experiences as a Marquette grad student — the first in the history of the English Department there to complete a PhD on Tolkien – and the many happy hours she spent in the archives. Amy pointed out that the archives are a lovely place to work (and they are: large tables, a wall of windows, and a place of quiet concentration with librarians bringing riches to your desk). She commented on how it was fun to see other people there occasionally working on other aspects of Tolkien’s fiction, creating a sense of a scholarly community. She advised researchers to ask the librarians for help when needed, as they are the most valuable resource in the archives. She also described the thrill of looking at the manuscripts themselves – something that all the panellists agreed with. You can read Tolkien’s drafts of Lord of the Rings in The History of Middle-earth, but only in looking at the manuscripts will you see, for example, the other side of the page, with Tolkien’s comments on exams, or his doodles, or other notes that give you a sense of what he was doing at the time. And of course, there is the challenge of reading his handwriting when he was especially inspired.

While Amy spoke about reading the manuscripts, I pointed to various topics that could be pursued in a study of pre-internet Tolkien fandom using the vast array of periodicals, fan materials, and adaptations collected in the secondary sources. There is great potential there for fan studies, film studies, and reception studies by examining how, through the years, fans have expressed their ideas and opinions in numerous zines on topics such as the following:

fans’ perceptions of what it means to be a fan;

the beginnings of organized Tolkien fandom in science fiction fandom and the perceived relationships between these two fan communities;

the perceived relationship between fans engaging in activities for fun and those developing more serious academic interests as time goes on;

the prevalence of fan works – fiction, art, poetry, songs, plays – from the earliest days of fan publications, without derogatory comments on fanfic such as you might find today;

the way in which women were writing Lord of the Rings fiction from female points of view;

the various ways in which the collection supports film studies – for example, tracking fan reactions to the Ralph Bakshi film, or reading the Ackerman screen treatment (with Tolkien’s comments in the margins), or imagining John Boorman’s screenplay (if only it had been filmed!), or reading fans’ anticipations of what a live-action film by some guy named Peter Jackson might be like.

and finally, looking at the ways in which fans perceived the Lord of the Rings “cult” in the 1960s and 70s when Tolkien fandom was highly visible. Essays on the subject extend from early days in the 60s to retrospectives in the 1980s. An interesting range of opinions can be found, from conservative to liberal, as these zine article titles might suggest: “Hippie Hobbits”; “Hippies or Hobbits?”; “Hippies versus Hobbits”; “Hippies relating to hobbits”; “On Behalf of the Half Hippy” and “Those hippity hobbits.” (Clearly, the alliteration was too much to resist).

These suggestions by no means exhaust the possibilities of the secondary materials in the Marquette collection, but I hope they make clear that the history of organized Tolkien fandom is to be found in the archive in Milwaukee. I should add that I was commenting on North American and British sources, but other materials from around the world can also be found in the collection.

Our final panellist was Richard West. He spoke of his long experiences and happy memories of discovering and using the Tolkien Collection over the years. He reiterated what Amy had said earlier: that there is nothing like looking at the actual manuscripts. Richard told the story of seeing Mr. Bliss and thinking that it was a lovely book that should be published, and of course it eventually was. He also spoke about how being able to consult manuscripts can complete the printed record: for example, in the published edition of Tolkien’s famous Letter 131 to Milton Waldman, Carpenter omits a small section, but it can be read in the original document in the collection.

I think the theme of our roundtable could be summed up simply by saying that the Marquette Tolkien Collection is an invaluable resource that all Tolkien researchers should know about.

If you’ve used the collection, I’d be interested in hearing about your experiences in the comments. If you were at our roundtable and have other notes to add, please feel free.

Areas of interest for future conferences

As I mentioned in my previous post, you can keep in touch by joining the Tolkien Studies at PCA open Facebook group. There you will find a report by organizer Robin Reid on the success of this trial run of the Tolkien Studies area. After a business meeting on the final day of the conference, participants identified a few areas of interest for future meetings that emphasized the multidisciplinary nature of Tolkien studies, including discussions of publishing opportunities and the state of Tolkien scholarship; teaching Tolkien; Tolkien linguistics; critical race studies; gender and queer studies; Tolkien in a modern context, including his knowledge of science and his relation to the genres of science fiction and fantasy; and creative presentations.

The next national PCA/ACA conference will be held in New Orleans in 2015.